Storefront Office

Salon Series: Urban Data Operations

Wednesday January 18, 2017

Image from "Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design, & The Nature of Cities" by Nicholas de Monchaux

Salon Series: Urban Data Operations

Wednesday, January 18th, 2017

7 – 9 pm

#storefrontseries #salonseries #urbandataoperations @storefrontnyc

WithGeoff Manaugh and Nicholas de Monchaux

As the contemporary city is increasingly and massively quantified, visualized, and analyzed, untapped territories are revealed. Data visualization makes tangible urban spaces that may previously have been latent, challenging existing strategies of urban design and planning.

Two days before the inauguration of a president who has promoted his own role as a master rebuilder, Storefront’s Salon Series: Urban Data Operations brought together key thinkers and practitioners for an informal discussion around the agency of data driven micro-interventions in the development and understanding of the city.

The event presented Nicholas de Monchaux’s latest publication, Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design, and the Nature of Cities, a compendium of designs for networked micro-interventions in American cities. The book served as a point of departure for a conversation about whether systems of information and infrastructure can serve those beyond their builders—or even how they can be built by those that they serve.

About the Book:

Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design, & The Nature of Cities (Princeton Architectural Press) presents a collection of data-driven tools and design prototypes for understanding and transforming the physical, social, and ecological resilience of cities. Written by Nicholas de Monchaux, associate professor of architecture and urban design at UC Berkeley, the book arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally tailored interventions for vacant land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Critical essays offer essential links between these innovative design experiments and the seminal works of the urbanist Jane Jacobs, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and the digital mapping pioneer Howard Fisher, as well as the developing science of urban networks and complexity. Designed in collaboration with the Dutch information-design studio Catalogtree, and featuring a foreword by Keller Easterling, the book combines many thousands of drawings, images, and critical and historical texts into a complex and timely manifesto for 21st-century infrastructure and urbanism.

About the Salon Series:

Storefront’s Salon Series is a informal gathering at Storefront’s gallery space promoting dialogue connecting art and architecture to a series of contemporary issues. Each of these events are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis, and members of Storefront can RSVP to reserve a seat. If you would like to become a member, please see here. To reserve your seat please contact us.

About the Participants

Geoff Manaugh:

Geoff Manaugh is author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City, about the relationship between crime and architectural design, as well as the long-running website BLDGBLOG. Manaugh is also the editor ofLandscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions. Previously, he was senior editor of Dwell and a contributing editor at Wired UK, as well as director of Studio-X NYC, an urban think tank and event space at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Nicholas de Monchaux:

Nicholas de Monchaux is associate professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley, where he is director of the Berkeley Center for New Media, and is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He is a partner in the Oakland-based architecture practice ModeM / Moll de Monchaux. De Monchaux’s first book, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011), was named a best book of the year on numerous design and technology lists. His design work has been exhibited internationally, at venues including SFMOMA, the MCA Chicago, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Lisbon Architecture Triennial.

Support

Storefront’s programming is made possible through general support from Arup; DS+R; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; Gaggenau; Knippers Helbig; KPF; MADWORKSHOP; ODA; Rockwell Group; Roger Ferris + Partners; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Greenwich Collection Ltd.; the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Peter T. Joseph Foundation; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.